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Rep. Peter King thinks the Obama administration's failure to have either the president himself or one of his officials give a press conference on the attempted Delta airline bombing is somehow the same as Bush not showing up in New Orleans right away after Katrina. I guess King wasn't satisfied that Rep. Pete Hoekstra was the only one going out there making a fool of himself immediately politicizing this thing.

Sorry pal but President Obama not rushing out to do a press conference about this attempted bombing that they probably don't even have a lot of answers on yet is not even remotely the same thing as Bush completely ignoring Hurricane Katrina and what was going on in New Orleans to the point where his aides finally had to put together footage on a DVD days later and get him to watch it for him to even have any idea what was happening down there. Unbelievable. And CNN's Drew Griffin was more than happy to help King along with this history revisionism.

For a reminder of how Bush reacted to Hurricane Katrina, here's a timeline put together by Think Progress.

Griffin also pointed out right after King got off the air with him that Janet Napolitano was going to be on State of the Union on CNN Sunday morning. I guess that's not soon enough to suit King and of course Griffin didn't bring that up while he still had him on the air either.

The Political Carnival pointed out another problem with King's hackery here--Pete King's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Memory:

Just now on CNN, Petey said that the ObamAdministration banned the word "terrorism", which is, of course, why Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab managed to smuggle explosives on board a jetliner.

Lose a word, gain a terrorist. See the logic?

Me neither.

No, Obama never eliminated the word "terrorism" from the government lexicon. It was the phrase "war on terror", one of the stupidest phrases ever concocted by any administration ever. That's why this administration is using different words. President Obama, rightfully, wouldn't want any association whatsoever with BushCoSpeak.

See? Some there is some change we can believe in.

So hey, Bogus Petey, check this out. It may jog your "memory".

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Full transcript via CNN below the fold.

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Glenn Beck hosted one of his hourlong sessions before a studio audience talking about the role of heroes in American life. The consensus, both by Beck and his panelists, was that Americans no longer look up to their historic heroes the way they should. Instead, as Beck suggested, we have "Mao Tse Tung hanging in our White House."

Say again? Oh yeah -- the Obama administration is riddled with radical Marxist revolutionaries. Right. Tell that to progressives right now. Moron.

Anyway, Beck apparently draws the line when it comes to the possibility, heaven forfend, Obama might be regarded as a hero:

Beck: I'm a big visual guy. And if you look at the way Barack Obama was imaged -- he was, as a savior. He was, as a -- you look at it now, anybody notice -- you watch the newspaper, and you watch the photos of him coming out of the White House, almost always, they'll have a shot of him with the seal of the President -- you notice that? And it almost looks like a halo. They'll take a shot from the side, and he's standing there, and it looks like a Russian icon!

He's talking about the photos of the president that have been shot for some time now whenever there's a press appearance at the White House. And it didn't start with Obama:

Indeed, if we're suddenly all worried about presidents being made out to be heroes, you have to wonder where Beck was when W. strutted out to his "Mission Accomplished" photo-op:

Now that's what I call an action hero.

Fortunately, Obama has spared us any codpiece appearances.

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Ex-White House Press Secretary Dana Perino told Greta Van Susteren last night on Fox that she wished President Obama would stop making those unpleasant allusions to her old boss, George W. Bush. Because, you know, Bush has not been taking shots at Obama.

Oddly, nary a mention of Dick Cheney was heard.

Perino was upset that Obama, in his interview for 60 Minutes, referenced Bush's military triumphalism:

Obama: And one of the mistakes that was made over the last eight years is for us to have a triumphant sense about war.

There was a tendency to say, "We can go in. We can kick some tail. This is some glorious exercise." When in fact, this is a tough business.

But Van Susteren at least pointed out that when George W. Bush was president, there was no shortage of blaming the previous administration:

Van Susteren: When President Bush 43 took office, was he critical in a similar way of President Clinton, his predecessor? Because one of the things I think we all want to think about, is we want our presidents having greatness about them and not getting petty.

Perino: I wasn't there at the beginning, and I think there is a certain amount of comparison that has to go on at the beginning. But almost everyone -- the left, right, and center -- columnists, even late-night talk-show hosts, are suggesting to President Obama that he lay off.

Well, no, Dana, you weren't around in the early years of the Bush administration. So maybe you weren't there for the endless list of things that Bush blamed Clinton for -- some of which included the following:

In 2002, he blamed Clinton for the recession.

Also in 2002, for the mess in the Middle East.

In 2004, for manufacturing job losses.

Also in 2004, for a shortage of flu vaccine.

In 2005, for "running from terrorists" and generally causing 9/11.

In 2006, for Bush's own failures in containing North Korea.

In 2008, for the soaring deficit.

But the best part came when she suggested Obama should not blame Bush for anything because Bush has been nice and quiet since the election and not criticized Obama:

Perino: Look, I think the other thing that you've seen is that President Bush has been an incredibly gracious post-president during the transition, and he said, 'President Obama deserves my silence.' and I would daresay that he deserves a lot more respect than he's getting right now.

Sure, Bush has been "gracious" because all Republicans have to do is send out Bush's surrogate thug, Vice President Cheney -- who in fact probably had at least as much to do with the direction of policy matters in the Bush administration as Bush himself did -- to do the dirty work for him.

Just last week, Cheney told the nation that the Obama administration was committing treason.

Before that, Cheney accused Obama of "dithering" on Afghanistan. He attacked Obama's decision to investigate torture policies under the Bush/Cheney regime. And he criticized Obama's Iraq withdrawal plans.

Yeah, pretty freaking gracious, those Republicans.

It's important to remind the public just how we got in this mess, and to remind them that the people who got us here want us to forget that fact. Their only hope is to cover their tracks, and Dana Perino is in the business of doing that.

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Jeremy Scahill joined Ed Schultz to discuss the recent column in the New York Times--Blackwater Guards Tied to Secret C.I.A. Raids:

WASHINGTON — Private security guards from Blackwater Worldwide participated in some of the C.I.A.’s most sensitive activities — clandestine raids with agency officers against people suspected of being insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and the transporting of detainees, according to former company employees and intelligence officials.

Several former Blackwater guards said that their involvement in the operations became so routine that the lines supposedly dividing the Central Intelligence Agency, the military and Blackwater became blurred. Instead of simply providing security for C.I.A. officers, they say, Blackwater personnel at times became partners in missions to capture or kill militants in Iraq and Afghanistan, a practice that raises questions about the use of guns for hire on the battlefield.

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Schultz asked Scahill if we had any idea of what kind of resources Blackwater had committed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Scahill: Ed, this company was a plausible deniability machine. Erik Prince the owner of that company built a parallel infrastructure to the U.S. military. He had an air force with his own aircraft. He had a maritime division. He had Blackwater Select which was providing special operations guys. They were guarding and still do guard U.S. diplomats and ambassadors, including the U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan right now.

Ed I also understand that Blackwater, because it’s owned by such an incredibly wealthy individual did some operations for free. That’s the ultimate deniability under the Bush administration. There were arrangements with Cheney, the C.I.A. and Special Forces where Blackwater’s guys were essentially working for free in operations funded by the owner of that company Erik Prince.

The story here though Ed that everyone seems to be missing is that Blackwater wasn’t just working for the C.I.A. They were working for the Joint Special Operations Command—the U.S. military and we talked about this on your show recently, including in Pakistan where Blackwater simultaneously worked for the C.I.A. and for JSOC. That story is a scandal that needs to be investigated much more thoroughly Ed.

Schultz: Is this relationship between Blackwater and the C.I.A. and the use of Blackwater still in existence under the Obama administration.

Scahill: It certainly is. In fact news breaking as I came on tonight that Leon Panetta the C.I.A. Director is trying to cancel Blackwater’s participation in the C.I.A. drone bombing campaign which has put its operatives on the ground not only in Pakistan but in Afghanistan as well. And so my understanding from both within Blackwater and from outside is that Blackwater remains very active with both U.S. Special Forces and the C.I.A.

Scahill tweeted this before going on Ed's show: #Blackwater is leaking the CIA ops for a reason. It also distracts from ongoing ops that are not CIA.

He also noted that ABC News confirmed his report tonight-Mercenaries? CIA Says Expanded Role for Contractors Legitimate.

You can find more from Scahill at his blog Rebel Reports.

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According to President Bush's former press secretary, the former president's refusal to sign the Kyoto climate change deal in 2005 set the stage for current climate change negotiations in Copenhagen.

"Because [Bush] declined to go forward with Kyoto, which is ultimately the right thing to do because the major economies like China and India weren't at the table, he worked to get them at the table and now this meeting is the next logical step in that process," Perino told Fox News' Chris Wallace Sunday.

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Rachel follows up on her reporting on the 'kill the gays' bill being considered in Uganda. Her show attempted to get some responses from the American legislators who have decided to inject themselves so deeply into African politics - with predictable results. Most of them either tried to wash their hands of their part in this absolutely horrid piece of proposed legislation or didn’t bother to respond at all. The scandal ridden John Ensign’s office said he was too busy screwing up the health care bill to give a response.

James Inhofe and Sam Brownback didn’t bother to respond, either. Don’t hold your breath waiting on those two knuckle-draggers, Rachel. I’m sure it will be a cold day in hell before either of them bother to tell the evil “librul” lesbian woman why they could care less if you were killed if you were unfortunate enough to live in Uganda, assuming this law gets passed.

Props to Rachel for keeping after this story. It has to be one of the most disgusting news items I’ve watched in a very long time and these C-Street wingers need to be held to account for their actions. It’s a shame the rest of the media is not giving this story the attention it deserves. They’re too busy chasing around the White House party crashers or Tiger Woods’ mistresses.

Transcript via Nexis Lexis below the fold.

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From The Daily Show:

President Obama channels George W. Bush in his speech announcing the deployment of an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan.

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Kay Bailey Hutchison just can't understand why anyone would care that she's a big flaming hypocrite with her concern for troop levels in Afghanistan now that a Democrat is the President. When David Shuster asks her why she and other Republicans didn't have anything to say back in 2008 when George Bush refused a troop increase in Afghanistan, Hutchison punts and never answers the question and instead says she doesn’t know why “we’re talking about 2008”. Hutchison gets some help from Tamryn Hall at the end of the segment. She jumped in there instead of allowing David Shuster to follow up and remind her why talking out of both sides of your mouth matters if you expect anyone to believe your concerns are legitimate now.

Shuster: Senator the complaint from Democrats though is that you're essentially shopping for the right generals and Democrats are pointing out that in September of 2008 when President Bush was in office the top U.S. Commander in Afghanistan at the time Gen. David McKiernan said this about his request for an additional 22,000 troops. "The danger is that we'll be here longer and we'll expend more resources and experience more human suffering than if we had more resources placed against this campaign sooner. The additional military capabilities that have been asked for are needed as quickly as possible"

That request from Gen. McKiernan was not granted until February of this year--was granted by President Obama. So will you acknowledge that Republicans who were speaking out today should have spoken out back at the end of the Bush administration?

Hutchison: Well I'm not sure exactly what your time frame is. I think certainly President Obama took several months to address the issue that Gen. McChrystal had asked for more troops and I think at this point we need to be talking about winning. We need to be talking about what is success. We need to establish that we are going to stop al Qaeda from exporting terrorism. That should be the mission and we should do whatever it takes to win this war on terrorism...(crosstalk)

Shuster: But Senator Republicans weren't saying that when Gen. McKiernan was making the request in the fall of 2008 when President Bush never mind taking three months--he didn't act on the request at all and the Republicans didn't--we've checked your record--can you refresh our recollection as to whether you were complaining about your colleagues and about the Bush administration ignoring Gen. McKiernan back in the fall of 2008?

Huchison: Well actually I ahhh... Sec. Gates was the Secretary then and I know certainly that he is doing everything that he can with the requests that are made for Afghanistan and we've had a ramp up of troop’s strength. We've been trying to allocate recourses away from Iraq and into Afghanistan. I really don't know why we are talking about what has happened in 2008 so much as we ought to be talking about what's happening for the next two years to win this war on terror.

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Rachel Maddow weighs in on President Obama's decision to send more troops to Afghanistan and his continuation of the Bush doctrine of preventive war in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Rachel brought up our CIA's covert action in Pakistan, but she forgot to mention Blackwater. She should have Jeremy Scahill on sometime soon if she wants to get into what we're doing in Pakistan.

OBAMA: And as commander-in-chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan.

We‘re in Afghanistan to prevent a cancer from once again spreading through that country. But this same cancer has also taken root in the border region of Pakistan. To abandon this area now—and to rely only on efforts against al Qaeda from a distance—would significantly hamper our ability to keep the pressure on al Qaeda, and create an unacceptable risk of additional attacks on our homeland and our allies.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: Tonight at 8:00 p.m. Eastern, this year‘s Nobel Peace laureate escalated the war in Afghanistan—for the second time in just the first year of his presidency.

In March, you will recall this president announced that his new administration had concluded a careful policy review of the options available in Afghanistan then and had decided to send 21,000 more troops.

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From The Daily Show:

George W. Bush breaks his silence to speak at the live equivalent of a creepy low budget infomercial for exercise equipment you'll never use.

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Well, I guess when Dick Cheney referred to Obama "dithering", he actually meant spending any time thinking about the situation at all, given how little time they spent preparing a report for the incoming administration. CAP's John Podesta points out the problem on This Week:

(Former Bush officials and Republicans) have been citing an Afghanistan strategy report they handed off to the Obama administration that clearly laid out recommendations for moving forward (to criticize Obama's decision process). From Cheney’s recent remarks to the Center for Security Policy:

In the fall of 2008, fully aware of the need to meet new challenges being posed by the Taliban, we dug into every aspect of Afghanistan policy, assembling a team that repeatedly went into the country, reviewing options and recommendations, and briefing President-elect Obama’s team. They asked us not to announce our findings publicly, and we agreed, giving them the benefit of our work and the benefit of the doubt.

Today on ABC’s This Week, Center for American Progress President and CEO John Podesta revealed that the Bush administration spent just one hour on that report:

PODESTA: [T]hey did present him with a report at the very end of the Bush administration, but I have it from reliable sources that the principals in the Bush administration spent one hour on that report before they handed it off to Obama.

Oh...I see...we're operating on the "shoot first, ask questions later" methodology of foreign policy. Yeah, that's worked so well for us so far.

Recently, Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-DE) — a former top aide to Biden and co-chair of the Vice President’s transition team — said that the Bush administration basically just “threw” the report “to the transition team as they were going out the door”:

KAUFMAN: So for him [Cheney] to come in at the end and say, “Well, we did it wrong for eight years. But then, in the end, we gave them a plan which really is what they should have used.” Let me tell you something: This administration came in. Rahm Emanuel was there. I was on the transition team on this. They started from scratch on Afghanistan. They took a blank piece of paper out and said, “What are we going to do to get this thing done?” … It was absolutely the perfect time to take a hard look at what we’re doing.

If nothing else demonstrates why the world community was happy enough with the new direction in foreign policy brought by the Obama administration that they would award him the Nobel Peace Prize, this certainly does. Imagine--taking a measured, educated and thoughtful approach as to how to deal with the mess that is Afghanistan. What a radical notion after the last eight years.

Steve Hynd at Newshoggers has a piece up on Afghanistan that focuses on why the Bush's gut reaction, no brains technique in Afghanistan has made it impossible to ever "win":

Daniel "Pentagon Papers" Ellsberg talks to Real News Network about Afghanistan. He says that he wrote McChrystal's assessment thirty years ago, only with the names changed; that counter-insurgency cannot succeed for a foreign occupier and that there can be no success that will survive after U.S. troops leave Afghanistan.

Ellsberg should be followed by reading Paul McGeogh's blistering critique of McChrystal and Obama's Afghan plan, which I noted yesterday and Andrew Sullivan picked up on today.

Via Raw Story, this very enlightening news that the Bush administration blocked efforts to enforce laws against predatory lending. We are so shocked:

Federal regulators in the Bush administration blocked attempts by state governments to prevent predatory lending practices that resulted in the financial crisis now stalking the American economy, a new study from the University of North Carolina says.

In 2004, the Office of the Currency Comptroller, an obscure regulatory agency tasked with ensuring the fiscal soundness of America's banks, invoked an 1863 law to give itself the power to override state laws against predatory lending. The OCC told states they could not enforce predatory-lending laws, and all banks would be subject only to less-strict federal laws.

Now, a research paper (PDF) from UNC-Chapel Hill's Center for Community Capital shows that those anti-predatory lending laws had actually worked. States that had stricter regulations on issuing mortgages were found to have fewer foreclosures.

"We believe that these findings are remarkable, since they suggest an important and yet unexplored link between [anti-predatory lending laws] and foreclosures," the study's authors state.

The study may be the first scientific evidence to back up claims made by many critics that the Bush administration and earlier administrations allowed last year's financial crisis to happen by not enforcing common-sense regulations on lenders.

Last year, seven months before the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the ensuing government banking bailout, then-New York Governor Eliot Spitzer wrote a Washington Post column in which he described how the Bush administration blocked states' efforts to prevent a crisis in the mortgage industry.

Spitzer wrote:

Predatory lending was widely understood to present a looming national crisis. This threat was so clear that as New York attorney general, I joined with colleagues in the other 49 states in attempting to fill the void left by the federal government. Individually, and together, state attorneys general of both parties brought litigation or entered into settlements with many subprime lenders that were engaged in predatory lending practices. Several state legislatures, including New York's, enacted laws aimed at curbing such practices.

What did the Bush administration do in response? Did it reverse course and decide to take action to halt this burgeoning scourge? As Americans are now painfully aware, with hundreds of thousands of homeowners facing foreclosure and our markets reeling, the answer is a resounding no.

Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.

Spitzer's Post column ran a month before the New York Times reported that federal authorities were investigating Spitzer as a patron of high-end hookers, ending his political career and long-running crusade against corporate malfeasance. Some observers, including investigative reporter Greg Palast, say this was not a coincidence.

The Bush Administration sure had a knack for letting criminals get away with it, didn't they? They failed to stop 9/11, never caught bin Laden, and now we're learning about the total incompetence of the SEC in responding to Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission repeatedly missed chances to catch Bernard Madoff’s $65 billion fraud over 16 years by assigning inexperienced investigators and accepting “implausible” explanations after catching him in lies, the agency’s internal watchdog said.

At least six warnings from sources including a money manager, a “respected hedge-fund manager” and a firm that studied Madoff’s business failed to spur a “thorough and competent” probe, Inspector General H. David Kotz wrote in a summary of a report released today. Madoff, in an interview with Kotz, said even he “was astonished” when investigators failed to check trading records that would have exposed his scam.

“Despite numerous credible and detailed complaints, the SEC never properly examined or investigated Madoff’s trading and never took the necessary, but basic, steps to determine if Madoff was operating a Ponzi scheme,” Kotz wrote.

This is not only an incredible report, it plays into a larger truth about the conservative conception of regulation as a needless bother rather than a diligent effort to protect the consumer. One incredible moment, referenced above but covered in detail by Zachary Roth, shows that Madoff basically thought he was caught and the scheme had been discovered by federal regulators, only to find himself safe once again.

The agency's biggest screw up, says the summary, was the fact that examiners never verified Madoff's trading through an independent third party.

The details of that failure are more astonishing still. Madoff at one point told examiners that all his trades were cleared through his account at the Depository Trust Company (DTC), a clearing agency -- and he gave the examiners his DTC account number. At that point, Madoff told Kotz in an interview, "I thought it was the end game, over. Monday morning they'll call DTC and this will be over." Amazingly, the SEC never followed up with DTC. Madoff said he was "astonished."

The summary almost makes clear that the SEC's right hand didn't know what the left was doing. It notes with astonishment that at one point, two Madoff examinations were going on at the same time within the agency, without either being aware of the other. It was Madoff himself who informed one team of the other's existence [...]

The final, failed Madoff investigation of 2006 -- triggered by a detailed Markopolos complaint -- was perhaps the most egregious. According to the summary, most of the investigative work was done by a staff attorney "who recently graduated from law school and only joined the SEC nineteen months before she was given the Madoff investigation. She had never previously been the lead staff attorney on any investigation, and had been involved in very few investigations overall. The Madoff assignment was also her first real exposure to broker-dealer issues."

According to the summary, that inexperience helps explain why, when Madoff told the examiners that he got such unprecedentedly good return simply because he had a good "feel" for the market, they took that nonsensical explanation at face value.

Bush's SEC didn't bother to check up on Madoff's dealings, and they took his explanations as good enough for them, because their attitude toward regulation was "don't mess with a good thing." Indeed, the entire stock market during the Bush years was kind of operating under a false reality in its own right. Madoff was a crook, but at least an honest crook. And even he couldn't get caught.

This is not just the story of one agency's embarrassing failure. The failure lied in the theory of government, existing to make profits for cronies and lay off the connected and the powerful. The failure to catch Madoff and the failure of conservatism are essentially the same stories.

Obviously, Jeffrey Immelt feels more than a little pressure to prove that NBC is not the liberal bastion (and messenger of Obama's secret army) that the unapologetic righties like to whinge about, otherwise there's really no excuse for this latest hire:

Journalism continues staggering pushes forward on an otherwise ordinary Sunday! In the great "tradition" of mixing up people like Matt Lauer and Meredith Viera with public drunks like Hoda and Kathy Lee, The Today Show's newest hire? Jenna Bush. Whee!

Absolutely, completely, 100% true. Here's looking at you, NBC, via the AP report:

...a 27-year-old teacher in Baltimore, [Bush] will contribute stories about once a month on issues like education to television's top-rated morning news show, said Jim Bell, its executive producer.

"It wasn't something I'd always dreamed to do," she said. "But I think one of the most important things in life is to be open-minded and to be open-minded for change."

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the spawn of the guy who mangled the English language so often that it was painful to listen to him speak and who is personally responsible for the grammatically-odd statement above is going to cover educational issues?

That's like asking the spawn of Darth Cheney, Liz Cheney, on her opinion about Obama's foreign policy, or lifelong government-paid health insurance recipient John McCain about his opinion on the public option...oh wait.

As Atrios tweeted yesterday:

I look forward to seeing Jenna Bush interview Liz Cheney on The Today Show, being introduced by Luke Russert

Unqualified nepotism: Conservative values at their very best.

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Bernard Goldberg was on The O'Reilly Factor last night touting his hot new scoop in the long-running controversy over George W. Bush's military service in the Texas Air National Guard:

Until now, the controversy over the Rather/Mapes story has centered almost entirely on one issue: the legitimacy of the documents – a very important issue, indeed. But it turns out that there was another very important issue, one that goes to the very heart of what the story was about – and one that has gone virtually unnoticed. This is it: Mary Mapes knew before she put the story on the air that George W. Bush, the alleged slacker, had in fact volunteered to go to Vietnam.

Who says? The outside panel CBS brought into to get to the bottom of the so-called “Rathergate” mess says. I recently re-examined the panel’s report after a source, Deep Throat style, told me to “Go to page 130.” When I did, here’s the startling piece of information I found:

Mapes had information prior to the airing of the September 8 [2004] Segment that President Bush, while in the TexANG [Texas Air National Guard] did volunteer for service in Vietnam but was turned down in favor of more experienced pilots. For example, a flight instructor who served in the TexANG with Lieutenant Bush advised Mapes in 1999 that Lieutenant Bush “did want to go to Vietnam but others went first.” Similarly, several others advised Mapes in 1999, and again in 2004 before September 8, that Lieutenant Bush had volunteered to go to Vietnam but did not have enough flight hours to qualify.

This information, despite the fact that it has been available since the CBS report came out four years ago, has remained a secret to almost everybody both in and out of the media — one lonely fact in a 234- page report loaded with thousands of facts, and overshadowed by the controversy surrounding the documents.

There's only one problem with this: These claims were nothing new. In fact, it had been reported by the Washington Post back in 1999 -- in a story that Goldberg in fact cites in his piece. Here are the relevant grafs:

Four months before enlisting, Bush reported at Westover Air Force Base in Massachusetts to take the Air Force Officers Qualification Test. While scoring 25 percent for pilot aptitude – "about as low as you could get and be accepted," according to Martin – and 50 percent for navigator aptitude in his initial testing, he scored 95 percent on questions designed to reflect "officer quality," compared with a current-day average of 88 percent.

Among the questions Bush had to answer on his application forms was whether he wanted to go overseas. Bush checked the box that said: "do not volunteer."

Bush said in an interview that he did not recall checking the box. Two weeks later, his office provided a statement from a former, state-level Air Guard personnel officer, asserting that since Bush "was applying for a specific position with the 147th Fighter Group, it would have been inappropriate for him to have volunteered for an overseas assignment and he probably was so advised by the military personnel clerk assisting him in completing the form."

During a second interview, Bush himself raised the issue.

"Had my unit been called up, I'd have gone . . . to Vietnam," Bush said. "I was prepared to go."

But there was no chance Bush's unit would be ordered overseas. Bush says that toward the end of his training in 1970, he tried to volunteer for overseas duty, asking a commander to put his name on the list for a "Palace Alert" program, which dispatched qualified F-102 pilots in the Guard to the Europe and the Far East, occasionally to Vietnam, on three- to six-month assignments.

He was turned down on the spot. "I did [ask] – and I was told, 'You're not going,' " Bush said.

Only pilots with extensive flying time – at the outset, 1,000 hours were required – were sent overseas under the voluntary program. The Air Force, moreover, was retiring the aging F-102s and had ordered all overseas F-102 units closed down as of June 30, 1970.

In other words, if Bush actually did volunteer for Vietnam duty, he did so secure in the knowledge there was no chance he'd actually be called upon. That is, he was talking big talk, once again, knowing full well he'd never have to back it up.

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